PG&E responds to fired lineman who claims utility ignored...

1of4A photo from Entergy Texas shows a worker installing a recloser, a device which automatically attempts to restart lines when it detects a fault.Photo: Entergy Texas

2of4Todd Hearn said he was fired after raising concerns about hazardous equipment; PG&E says it was for time-card fraud.Photo: Max Whittaker / Special to The Chronicle

3of4PG&E accused Hearn of “timecard fraud” in a court filing Thursday.Photo: Max Whittaker / Special to The Chronicle

4of4Former PG&E lineman Todd Hearn said he was fired after raising wildfire safety concerns.Photo: Max Whittaker / Special to The Chronicle

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. fired a lineman for time-card fraud and other “serious misconduct,” not in retaliation for concerns he aired about electrical equipment he felt made the utility’s power lines more vulnerable to starting dangerous fires, the company said Thursday in court papers.

The utility said former lineman Todd Hearn was fired last January along with four other colleagues who all worked out of the Napa yard after an investigation into “timecard fraud and misrepresenting of work activities.” The company said it has addressed concerns Hearn raised about a certain kind of device designed to automatically restart a power line after it turns off.

PG&E’s filing Thursday came in response to a motion Hearn made last month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. He asked the judge to allow him to file a $7.6 million civil lawsuit against PG&E. The 50-year-old Napa resident claims he was placed on leave and terminated by the company after complaining about electrical equipment that could lead to fires. All civil lawsuits against the company have been frozen since the company filed for bankruptcy protection in January.

The devices, called reclosers, allow PG&E to avoid sending workers out to fix temporary faults, which are common. But reclosers can also be risky because they shoot bursts of electricity that can start a fire if a broken line is in contact with dry vegetation.

Hearn, who worked for 20 years at the company, said he and his colleagues complained to management about reclosers called TripSavers repeatedly since the company began installing them in 2017, months before the company’s power lines sparked a series of wildfires around Wine Country. Hearn alleged the utility unsafely installed the TripSavers in high-fire-risk areas, but the company did not take the warnings seriously.

On Thursday, the company asked the judge to deny Hearn’s motion, arguing that Hearn should just let his ongoing union grievance he filed after his termination “run its course.” The utility also said it resolved any recloser issues by implementing a program to disable automatic reclosing in high-threat areas during fire season.

In a July 17 letter, PG&E Vice President Sumeet Singh explained that company policy to Hearn.

“Regarding your comment about incorrect installations and malfunctioning TripSavers, if you have knowledge of specific locations with incorrect installations or malfunctioning TripSavers, I would value your sharing of this information with us as soon as possible so that we can take the appropriate action,” Singh wrote.

Hearn’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment. PG&E made similar charges of fraud against Hearn in a termination letter previously reviewed by The Chronicle. Hearn has denied acting improperly, telling The Chronicle he believed PG&E retaliated against him.

It’s not clear how large a role, if any, reclosers played in the October 2017 fires. One fire that merged into the 56,556-acre Nuns Fire complex in Sonoma and Napa counties was “caused by a downed power line after PG&E attempted to re-energize the line,” according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. One attorney representing fire victims said he’s investigating the device in some of those other 2017 blazes.

Reclosers have been implicated in other fires, including the 2007 Witch Fire in San Diego County and a devastating 2009 conflagration in Australia that killed 119 people.

San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison have long disabled their reclosers during times of high fire risk, but PG&E was only doing a limited trial of that approach at the time of the 2017 infernos.

PG&E has since embraced the practice: The company’s 2019 wildfire safety plan said it has a program to disable 2,800 reclosers in high-fire-threat areas, and 2,100 of them could be remotely switched off during wildfire conditions as of the end of last year. The remainder can be turned off manually, and the company said it was working to have all reclosers in risky fire zones equipped to be remotely disabled.

Matthias Gafni joined The San Francisco Chronicle as an enterprise reporter in February 2019. He investigates stories in the East Bay and beyond. For almost two decades, Gafni worked for the Bay Area News Group – San Jose Mercury News, East Bay Times and Vallejo Times-Herald -- covering corruption, child sexual abuse, criminal justice, aviation and more. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and graduated from UC Davis. He lives with his wife and three kids in the East Bay.